My partner, David Sutherland. We cover sustainable energy and mobility. Within that, we cover MP Materials. Very happy to have Martin Sheehan here. He's the VP of Investor Relations. Thank you, Martin, for coming. Maybe because we have a big group here, all with different exposure to MP. If you could just maybe give us a two, three-minute overview of who MP is, and then we'll start from there. For that, yeah, I just want to make this memo. If anyone has any questions in the smaller room, please just raise your hand, or you can email session4@rdbbear.com to pass along here. Sorry to cut you off. No, no problem. Thanks for having me, Ben and Davis. Unfortunately, our CFO, the name on the sign there, could not make it today, so the B team is substituting. I apologize about that. I also wanted to say to everybody in the room, everybody out there listening to the webcast, happy Veterans Day. MP Jim always talks about how we are patriotic capitalists, and we believe in the mission that we are on to bring the rare earth supply chain back to the West and the United States. We appreciate all our veterans out there and all the work they put in or put in over their careers. Thank you. With that, MP, we are the only sort of fully integrated Western rare earth producer and supplier in the United States. We have Mountain Pass, which is a world-class, and when I say world-class, I really mean world-class ore body. It is one of the best two, three ore bodies in the world in terms of producing and concentration of rare earths. The key to rare earths being NdPr, neodymium and praseodymium. Those are critical in terms of magnets, NdFeB magnets, neodymium iron boron magnets, which are very high-powered magnets, and they're used in all sorts of applications. We are now moving downstream where we are actually now refining NdPr oxide at Mountain Pass. We have built a facility in Fort Worth, Texas. We call it Independence because of our mission, but it's also on the corner of Independence Parkway and Victory in Fort Worth, Texas. We are building magnets for our foundational customer, GM. By the end of this year, we should be in initial production for GM. Apple will be taking a significant amount of the capacity of that facility. We are building out a complete end-to-end supply chain, whether it is mining, refining, metal making, alloy making, everything. I do not think there is another company in the world that does all of the steps. Again, a truly vertically integrated company. Obviously, we have some big partnerships, which I am sure we will talk about a little bit more. I make the joke because I covered the previous owner of the Mountain Pass Mine, Molycorp, that we have heard rare earths more in the last six months than the last 15 years. Could you just talk to us about how this bubbled up to such importance? And then we will go from there. Yeah, again, neodymium magnets are used in so many applications. I think most people think of them as sort of in EV traction motors. But they're used in your laptops, your iPads, you name it, HVAC systems. Any sort of electrified motion is probably using a neodymium magnet in it, particularly if size and power are really, really critical. The fact that they're used in such proliferation and the fact that 90% of those magnets today are made in China, 90% of the metal making is done in China, 90% of the refining of neodymium praseodymium is done in China. Now, suddenly, you have a situation where Independence Day came, was Independence Day with the tariffs in April. Whether people did not realize how much NdFeB magnets are used and the proliferation of them, or if people did not realize how tight the supply chains were for those magnets, or that China would even use this as a cudgel against the United States, I am not sure what happened, but in the end, China pulled the trigger, so to speak, and basically in April stopped or certainly made it extremely difficult to export magnets out of China. We saw major manufacturers, OEMs, have to shut down truck lines because they could not get a magnet for a speaker, for example. That really set the wheels in motion for the DoD to come and start talking to us about how to get a supply chain stood up in the United States much more quickly than the path we were on at the time. Maybe just to take a step back too, could you just talk about the different stages of the value chain and then how China has the control over the different parts of that? Sure. China has something like 60% of the world's reserves of rare earths. They mine about 60%-70% of the world's rare earths. They refine, like I said before, about 90%. They metalize about 90% of NdPr. They produce something like 90% of the world's magnets. All of the magnets that all these name brand companies are buying, they are basically getting from China, right? The value chain obviously is completely tied into China. Now that they have sort of used this lever against not only the United States, mind you, but the world, right? There are a lot of reports India could not get magnets, right? Korea could not get magnets. I think even as recent as last week, we were hearing that certain customers or certain customers of China could not get materials out of China. Yeah, we're just sort of in this unique position of trying to stand this back up in the United States and trying to do it as quickly as possible. I'm sure we'll spend some time talking about the DOW agreement and transformational benefit for the business. Maybe just to start and level set too, depending on when you came out of the MP story, maybe you know the stage one, stage two, stage three, now materials and magnetics. Wondering if you could just talk about the production of each stage, how you've added value through each one, and where things will ultimately be going, maybe say middle of next year. Yeah, so it starts with obviously mining and beneficiation, where we basically take 6% or 7% ore out of the ground, and we concentrate it up into a 60%-ish concentrate. Historically, we sold all of that to China because it couldn't be refined anywhere. Over the last several years, we actually invested in the facilities that the predecessor company built, but changed some of the process steps and didn't have the capacity that was needed. We spent a couple of years upgrading that facility, optimizing that facility, and then we started actually refining NdPr in late 2023. We're now at about half production, if you will. Our goal is to get to 6,000 tons of NdPr oxide production annually. We're at about half that run rate right now. We're making good steady progress. Our goal, again, if we can keep on the current pace, would be around the end of 2026, we would get to that full production level. Of course, we're also producing now magnets in Independence, or we'll soon. We actually are making magnets in that facility using the prototyping equipment, basically what we call the NPI, new product introduction area, where we actually are producing magnets that meet GM spec. The big step now is we're commissioning all the commercial scale equipment right now, and we will be bringing that online at the end of this year so we can again start making magnets for GM. We actually are already making metal for GM. We're taking NdPr oxide and turning that into NdPr metal and generating revenue and EBITDA from that. That's kind of like the near term of where we're at. I want to get to kind of the most recent summit with the President and Xi and what's changed. Before we go there, starting with in April and limiting rare earth magnets, I think the previous administration wanted to do something in critical materials and rare earths. This administration really did the first kind of big deal with you guys, with the DoD. Sorry, I still say Twitter too, but the Department of War. I know it's complicated, but could you kind of provide some framework just around what that deal entails? Yeah, so because we have already invested close to $1 billion or roughly $1 billion between the refining aspect of Mountain Pass plus building this facility in Fort Worth, the Independence facility for GM initially, we were sort of well ahead of the game in terms of having this vertically integrated business. I think when China kind of put the hammer down on exports of magnets, the DoD came to us. They did some pretty significant due diligence at both Mountain Pass and at the Independence facility, and then went into sort of a deep and very challenging negotiation with Jim and the team to figure out how do we make magnets yesterday, right? It is sort of an operation warp speed. Also making sure that the refining side of the business is not subject to the mercantilist policies of China in terms of putting pressure on price as opposed to letting the market sort of dictate to itself. We had this, again, protracted and challenging negotiation with the government such that we would get a price floor on the NdPr oxide we produce of $110 a kilogram. At that time, the market was maybe $55. Just to be clear on that, you get that price guaranteed regardless of what you do with it, if you sell it or. Or stockpile it, right? To the extent because we're still ramping our refinery, we are stockpiling some level of that concentrate that we produce. We actually get some payment from the DoD for that stockpiling starting October 1 last month. In addition, now in addition to the 110, obviously they want a magnet facility. First, they wanted us to fill out the Independence facility because at the time we only had GM. It was 1,000 tons to GM. That facility can do about 3,000 tons of magnets. Obviously, we were in pretty deep discussions with Apple at that time. They wanted us to fill up that facility, which we did with Apple eventually, maybe a week after the DoD deal. They also wanted this, what we call the 10X facility, 10X because it takes us to 10,000 tons of total magnet production. They have agreed to buy all of the output of that 7,000-ton facility, right? It is a guaranteed offtake. It is a cost-plus deal with the plus being $140 million of sort of guaranteed EBITDA. Obviously, we can syndicate that to commercial customers, which the DOE is happy for us to do because they share in some of the upside of EBITDA to the extent that we add on profitability from commercial customers versus the DOE deal. They also invested $400 million in a preferred equity, which can turn into about 13 million shares. They have a warrant, which if they exercised, would take them to about 15% ownership of the company. They will be, or they technically are, I guess, or maybe not technically, but they are our largest shareholder. Jim, our CEO, is close behind. Owner-operated. It's sort of a really good partnership in terms of helping us support the refining business, making sure we have capital there too and an incentive there to keep investing, to keep that business going despite no matter what China does, so to speak. Also a magnet business, which hopefully kind of leads the industry and starts helping ancillary industries grow around it. One question that we get very frequently on this is what's the upside if you have this guarantee and they guarantee this sort of magnet facility? Maybe just there's several different areas I could see, but if you could just kind of give the top three. Top three. Okay, so one would be the fact that we laid out sort of a minimum EBITDA profile of about $650 million and about $400 million, round numbers, was related to NdPr oxide production in that minimum $110 price point. That was predicated on us producing 6,000 tons of NdPr oxide and selling it. That was kind of the that's our ramp, right? That's what we're trying to get to by the end of next year. We also have a recycling capability now. Apple is investing with us to build a recycling capability that will produce NdPr oxide for them and for their magnets. That would get the top-up payment. Also, our upstream, our concentrate business is heading towards a 60,000 tons of concentrate output. That would add another 1,000 or 2,000 tons of NdPr oxide potentially to the extent that we refine it, etc. Certainly, even if we stockpiled, we will get some payment for that. That is upside. That is not in that model. Then there is third-party feed from that model. The $110 price point is certainly one big area where there is additional upside. On the magnetic side, again, if you think about this minimum floor of $140 million EBITDA with the DoD buying all of that 7,000 tons of output, to the extent that we can sell a lot of that commercially to commercial customers, we believe there is upside there in terms of driving additional EBITDA based on how we negotiated with Apple and GM. The DoD would share in that upside, but again, that would be additional upside. Lastly, look, we are going to be producing a lot of NdPr oxide over the next several years. Obviously, we'll sell that into the market, so to speak. Also, there's the opportunity to just expand beyond this 10X facility, right? If you really want to look downstream, as Jim likes to say, five years ago, we never would have thought we had a magnet facility built, right? Here we are, we have a magnet we've already built. We're about to embark on 1,000 tons of production in the coming years just for GM. In five years, who knows what opportunities will be out there? Maybe we move even further downstream and vertically integrate even further using that magnet as kind of the linchpin for what we do next. The team is really, really excited about what we're executing on and the opportunities down the road to really expand the business. Another question we get very frequently is what happens if the geopolitical tension subsides and things go back to normal, if you will? Going back to Ben's point earlier about the recent summit between President Trump and Xi, I guess where do things stand now and what happens in the event that we can be friends with China and there's some sharing of maybe U.S. producers going back to buying from China? I guess do you expect that to happen? First, I think today it's a little unknown what's going on in China in the sense that they agreed to roll back the October restraints, if you will. The April ones are still out there in theory where you have to get licenses to get NdFeB magnets released out of China. We just saw an article where they're hiring 60 people to help with that process, which sounds like it's a process that's not going away. Maybe they'll do it faster, but it doesn't sound like that process is going away. I think at the end of the day, maybe most importantly, they can just pull the trigger again tomorrow, right? I mean, there's nothing that stops them if something else in the world happens that they're not happy about, that they just put those restrictions back on. Most importantly from our perspective is our customer discussions have not stopped or nothing has changed from an interest from potential customers in wanting to stand up some level of supply here in the United States and from MP. I think not much has changed. I do not think we are ever going back. Look, will companies buy magnets from China? In that world, of course they will. China dominates that market right now. We cannot pull all of that supply chain back here tomorrow. It is going to take years, right? I think that is always going to be, they are always going to be a player in this market. The question is, will, I think companies now realize you cannot have a single source of failure like this. Sure. You guys have talked about one question we also get a lot is in magnet production, you have the light rares, you also need heavy rares. You guys have, could you talk about the project you have underway to refine heavies? I think you guys addressed your current needs on the call, but if you could just talk about that because there's some thought out there that you guys are light on heavies and you're short on that. That could be a risk to you guys. Yeah. Yeah, I can't get through a meeting without talking about heavy rare stuff for sure. Yeah, so understand that Mountain Pass is a, because it's a bastnasite ore body like most monazite and bastnasite ore bodies, like most ore bodies in the world. They're light rare earth rich, if you will. But Mountain Pass is massive, right? We're producing or on the way to producing something like 60,000 tons of concentrate, right? So 60,000 tons of ore in concentrate. So it may be a very small percentage, but it's a small percentage of a very big number, right? So the amount of heavy rare earth, dysprosium and terbium in particular, which are used in these high-end magnets, there's plenty, if you will, in the ore body based on what we're mining today and will be processing to take care of GM's needs. They're 1,000 tons of magnets. In addition, right now we're stockpiling, right? We're obviously mining it right now. Our separations facility is under construction for heavies and, excuse me, dysprosium and terbium. We're actually stockpiling now. We have hundreds of tons of what we call SEG Plus, basically heavy rare earth concentrate sitting on site ready to be produced. We are now building this heavy separations facility at Mountain Pass so that we can produce about 200 tons of dysprosium and terbium. Apple is going to bring their own feed stock because they want recycled feed stock. Initially, they're going to provide their own feed stock. That feed stock will have dysprosium and terbium in it, right? Because it's spent magnet waste. In other words, between the ore body and the fact that we're stockpiling SEG and Apple, we have plenty of dysprosium and terbium for the Independence facility, the 3,000-ton facility. What we need is likely more dysprosium and terbium for the 7,000-ton facility, the 10X facility. Here we'll probably have, we believe that we'll have, multiple opportunities here in terms of both feedstocks as well as more recycled materials. We're in a sort of a unique position where we can help maybe an ionic clay stand up a concentrate type business, like a stage, what we used to call stage one business, an upstream business, where we could be the offtaker. We could JV. We could obviously provide a lot of technical support. We have a pretty, because Mountain Pass is so big, the refinery is so big and scaled, we have a lot of leeway in the types of feed stock we can take. We feel very good that we'll have multiple providers for that feed stock. The nice thing is, because we will be, if not the low-cost producer, a low-cost producer of like NdPr, for example, and because this feed stock will come with that NdPr, and oh, by the way, we get a $110 top-up on that NdPr we would produce, right? We're in a unique position to be a good partner in terms of getting those offtake agreements done. Maybe with that, I'll leave it there. One question I do not think or one area does not get a lot of focus is on recycling. Could you talk about maybe first the Apple relationship, the history of it, and then kind of what the recycling facility, how long that takes to stand up, and then what kind of benefits that has? Yeah. What's not well understood is that about 30% of the NdPr oxide produced in China comes from what they call swarf or kerf. It's basically waste off the manufacturing line in the magnet facilities. I mean, think about it. You make a big block and then you have to cut it and shave it, and suddenly there's all this waste and blocks chip and things like that. It's all dysprosium, terbium, and NdPr, right? You want to recycle that. In China, that all gets recycled back to the refiners. The beauty of Mountain Pass and Independence in this 10X facility is all under one roof now. When we make this, when we get this magnet waste out of these facilities, we'll be able to recycle that back and reuse it. Obviously, that drives down your cost, if you will. It extends your mine life, all sorts of things that are beneficial to the company and particularly from a cost perspective. We have always known we had to do this. With Apple, the beauty is since I think the iPhone 11, they have always used what they say is recycled material, mostly swarf and kerf to recycle magnets to use in their iPhones, etc., and all of their products. They want to use dedicated recycled materials. They are, again, they are pre-funding us about $200 million of pre-payments that will go to building out the Independence magnet facility for them, but it also will go to building this recycling circuit at Mountain Pass. They will have a dedicated circuit so that we can take magnet scrap, whether it is post-industrial waste or post-consumer waste, which certainly initially Apple will provide and we will then refine for them. That circuit will come online over the next year or two, couple of years. I do not think we have given an exact date on that, but again, that will be used to separate dysprosium, terbium, NdPr for the Independence facility to make magnets for them. Maybe if I could ask one, going back to magnetics and just looking at the commercial pipeline, if you could talk just a little bit about how the pipeline changed before and after the April export controls, before and after the DoD agreement. I guess part two is looking ahead. When we think about you signing offtake agreements, does that come before or after the 10X facility is built or along the way? I guess just piecing together the timeline there. Okay. A lot of questions there. Maybe a lot all at once. Yeah. Where would you like me to start? The. Maybe start with how the commercial pipeline has changed year to date after these agreements. It changed dramatically on April, whatever that was, 4th, 5th, 6th, because suddenly people knew they only had two weeks of magnet supply, a week of magnet supply in their manufacturing facility. The phones immediately rang, "Can I get a magnet tomorrow?" Of course, the answer was no. We did point a lot of people to our Japanese customers who were buying our NdPr oxide. I'm sure our Japanese customers are happy about that. Maybe they could help them. That drove the DOW deal ultimately, but it certainly drove a significant amount of phone calls across every single vertical you can think of about when can I get a magnet from MP. If I can't get one tomorrow, can I get one in two years, right? In addition, I think when we signed the Apple deal and the DOW deal, I think the same thing happened. I think I do not know if it is a little bit of FOMO or a little bit of like, "Oh my gosh, you got 7,000 tons and you have already filled out three and now there is only seven. I better get some," right? That also sort of kicked off a wave of discussions. I think, again, the discussions continue. As we said on the call, I think Ryan said it well, we have the luxury here because the 10X facility is sold out already to the DOW. We have the luxury to take our time and find the right partners, find the right not just customer, but what kind of magnets we want to make. Obviously, low SKU counts, high volumes is better from a cost perspective, probably better from a return perspective. Obviously, we're still arguably getting our feet wet here, right? It is certainly, I do not know if you remember from our Q1 call, we called it a freak out moment, right? We have to listen to our pre-earnings music often will. Always fair telling. Always will always have a message, if you will. Yeah. The great thing is that these discussions continue and we're optimistic we're going to get additional deals done. You already. There is no rush, right? True. You already started to answer it, I guess, but just to round out that thought, I mean, do we think of these announcements coming between now and when the facility is ultimately commissioned, maybe some before, during, after? Yeah. For all I know, tomorrow a deal gets announced, right? I think these deals will come and they'll come when both sides come to put pen to paper. Sure. Very quickly, last couple of questions. Just the site of the 10X facility, when should we learn more about that? Obviously sooner rather than later, right? I don't think we've given a hard timeline because there's a lot to go through, right? We're figuring out what are the permitting issues. Obviously, labor is going to be really important, right? We're going to have to hire a lot of people. Metal making is a 24/7 operation, right? So you're going to need multiple shifts. Obviously, there's something to be said about being near the Independence facility because that's where all the kind of state-of-the-art equipment is in terms of testing and that sort of thing. We'll see. Obviously, we want to get the best tax deals we can get done, right? We're going to try to run a competition here. It is sort of, I would say that's kind of front and center right now with everything they're doing right now. Getting this site selection done is really important. We've all seen a lot of announcements across the value chain of players that want to get into the business from large players to startup kind of companies. On the magnet side, the question we get a lot is just about oversupply of magnets. If you have several players coming into the U.S., how do you guys think about that? Yeah. I do not think we are all that concerned about additional supply coming online. First of all, we are sold out for arguably the next decade, right? We have a customer and the DoD is going to take every magnet we can make. Obviously, hopefully we syndicate a lot of that. The second issue is there are so many different kinds of magnets. Like I said, there are like 70, 80, 90 magnets in an ICE vehicle, right? There are so many opportunities for niche players to specialize in, etc. I think to really build out the industry, there are all these support industries too. As what we believe the national champion, we can lead the way and help start develop these sort of ancillary industries here in the States or in the West. If there are other magnet makers, that is great. Their challenge will be feedstock, right? That will be like, where are they getting their alloy from? Where are they getting their metal from? Are they doing it themselves? Where are they getting their NdPr oxide from? Where are they getting their dysprosium and terbium from? Whether that's through recycling or something like that, we'll have to see. That will be their challenge. That's the beauty of us is that we're vertically integrated. We have the feedstock, right? We have the magnet capability now. In our last roughly minute, I know we're about to run out of time. Thank you very much, Martin. I'm just wondering if you could talk about the spending that will happen between now and the 10X facility ramping out Independence. You mentioned pre-payments from Apple, which were also a part of the GM deal. Just, I guess, sources of capital and capital needs over the next intermediate term. Right. We're sitting with about $2 billion of cash on the books. I think we have roughly, round numbers, about $1 billion of debt. So we're net cash positive. Obviously, with the new $110 price for our cash from operations starting in Q1 of next year, we'll change dramatically to the positive, if you will. We believe we're fully funded with that capital plus cash flow profile for the next few years to fund the capital. I think part of the DOW deal was the fact that we had to be fully funded for this facility, the 10X facility, not to mention Apple, etc. We'll start to give a better guide sort of on an annual basis in February. Anyway, that $2 billion plus the cash flow from operations puts us in great shape. Thank you, Martin. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Ben.